Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 1884
Petersburg Borough Assembly advanced its wireless communication facilities ordinance through a second reading Monday, adopting 10 more amendments that drew sharp criticism from residents — and some misgivings from assembly members themselves — even as the assembly voted 5-0 to keep the process moving. Ordinance 2026-14A would amend Title 19 of the municipal code to regulate cell towers and other transmitters, requiring them to be reviewed as conditional uses with public notice and Planning Commission approval while remaining consistent wit...
Petersburg Municipal Power and Light will not add a diesel surcharge to customers’ bills this year to recover the cost of running the borough’s generators during the annual Southeast Alaska Power Agency (SEAPA) maintenance shutdown, Utility Director Steve Harbour told the Borough Assembly on Monday. Each summer, SEAPA takes its transmission system offline for maintenance, and Petersburg must power the community entirely from its own generation. Roughly 75% of the borough’s electricity normally comes from SEAPA, with the remaining quarter gener...
The Borough Assembly voted 5-0 Monday to send a letter to the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities asking the state to add pedestrian routes to its winter snow-removal work in Petersburg. The letter, prepared by Mayor Bob Lynn, focuses on non-motorized corridors that the borough says become unusable and unsafe when snow and ice go uncleared. It singles out the sidewalks and pedestrian routes along Haugen Drive leading to the Petersburg James A. Johnson Airport and Sandy Beach Park, and the Libby Strait bike path, which the...
Petersburg voters will decide this fall whether to raise the town's sales tax cap. Petersburg's sales tax is 6%. Currently, sales and services are only taxed on the first $1,200, which means tax on a single purchase is capped at $72 max. Now, the Borough wants to raise that cap to $300 by changing the taxable amount to $5,000. Borough officials say Petersburg has the lowest cap among major towns in Southeast Alaska. The cap has been adjusted only once since it was established nearly 70 years ago...
Summer has arrived, and, these days, summer in Petersburg means electric scooters all around town used for transportation, often by youth. The 17 Levy electric scooters that showed up in town in August of 2024 are locally owned by Stikine Services, run by Wes and Angie Davis. A few years ago, the Davises, when traveling to Nashville, noticed electric scooters around the town, and thought they would be a valuable addition to the Petersburg community. "Everyone we have talked to loves them, and...
Karl Hagerman will retire June 30 as Petersburg's utility director, closing a 33-year career with the borough that carried him from an entry-level water and wastewater worker to the head of two municipal departments - and, during the gaps between managers, to several stints as interim city manager. "This is the last full week, two days next week, and then we'll be done after 33 years and seven or eight odd months," Hagerman told the Pilot. Born and raised in Petersburg, Hagerman started with...
Two weeks after rejecting it, the Petersburg Borough Assembly on Monday approved the sale of a borough parcel to Tidal Network for a wireless communication tower - with all four members who had blocked the deal switching to yes and the resolution passing unanimously. Resolution 2026-16 authorizes the sale of an approximately 0.23-acre borough-owned parcel to the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, doing business as Tidal Network. The resolution had failed 2-4 at the...
A zoning ordinance to regulate cell towers and other wireless facilities — a revised version of one that died on a tie vote two weeks ago — came back to the Petersburg Borough Assembly on Monday. Assembly Member Jeff Meucci reintroduced the ordinance and offered five amendments which the assembly accepted before the unanimously approving the ordinance’s first reading. Ordinance 2026-14 would amend Title 19 of the municipal code to set zoning and permitting standards for wireless communication facilities and other towers. The ordinance requi...
Petersburg voters will likely decide this fall whether the borough can borrow up to $3,315,000 to finish the Scow Bay standby generation project, after the assembly approved the that ordinance’s first reading on Monday. Ordinance 2026-13 would authorize electric-utility revenue bonds of not more than $3,315,000 for the Scow Bay standby generator, which Petersburg Municipal Power and Light says faces a budget shortfall driven by construction-cost increases since the project began. If it clears three readings, the borrowing question goes on t...
Support for the Landless To the Editor: Sunday, May 24, 2026, was an historic day for Séet Ká Kwáan/Petersburg. The town was abuzz with excitement for the launch of the first canoe out of the community in over 100 years. The canoe journey followed ancestral pathways across our waters between Séet Ká Kwáan and Dzánti K’ihéeni/Juneau. I was excited and grateful to join this journey as a team puller in the Kéet Yaakw (Killerwhale Canoe). With each stroke of the paddle over the next 10 days, it became more and more clear why it is necessary to pass...
The Borough Assembly has given final approval this month to raising Petersburg’s marine passenger fee from $5 to $8 per passenger, with the increase set to take effect Jan. 1, 2027. Ordinance 2026-07, which amends Chapter 4.80 of the municipal code, passed unanimously on third reading at the assembly’s June 1 meeting. The fee is assessed once per cruise, on marine passenger vessels upon their first entry into any borough port, and has been collected since March 2018. Finance Director Jody Tow has estimated the increase will generate rou...
Petersburg’s electric utility rates will go up 4% on July 1 after the Borough Assembly approved the third reading of Ordinance 2026-08 at its June 1 meeting. The ordinance raises electric rates across all customer classes — residential, general service, large commercial, harbor and municipal — for fiscal year 2027. For a typical residential customer using 1,203 kilowatt-hours a month, the monthly bill rises from about $163 to about $170. The residential customer charge increases from $16.00 to $16.64, and the energy rate moves from 12.2 cents...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly on Monday awarded the wastewater outfall repair project to Rock-n-Road Construction of Petersburg in an amount not to exceed $222,000. The 6-0 vote followed a short explanation from Public Works Director Aaron Marohl, who was asked by Member Jeff Meucci to describe the project “for the folks at home.” Marohl said a February 2025 dive to locate the outfall found the line broken and separated at some unknown point. The borough reported the deficiency to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Alaska Dep...
The assembly gave final, unanimous approval Monday to Ordinance 2026-11, updating the borough’s sewer-utility service rates for FY2027 through FY2030. Built on the utility’s annual rate review, the ordinance cites rising operating costs, aging infrastructure and increasingly stringent EPA and state environmental requirements. It passed 6-0 on third reading after unanimous first and second readings. In his memo, Assistant Public Works Director Thomas Rummel wrote that critical components — lift stations, piping, pumps, controls and the marin...
For the better part of a year wireless communication infrastructure has been a topic of controversy and community engagement in Petersburg. The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska has been pursuing three tower locations in Petersburg through its broadband initiative, Tidal Network, as part of a federally funded broadband expansion effort - a project that has drawn sustained opposition from a contingent of residents raising concerns about radio frequency emissions, to...
To all my friends and external family in Petersburg To the Editor: I arrived on April 13, 1979 as girlfriend to Jerry Hegar who soon became my lifemate. I was ignorant of Alaska and soon learned a lot. Marie James hired me in her shop and I soon learned about living here! There are so many memories I can’t remember all of them. Marie introduced me to the culture and what it means to appreciate our surroundings. I have made so many friends here that it is hard to leave. This community is great. As I look forward to making new memories with my y...
After a 1.5-year, $12 million renovation, Forest Service staff returned on May 14 to the Federal Building located on the south end of downtown Petersburg. During the project, staff were temporarily relocated to a facility out the road, about 2.3 miles, at Scow Bay. The remodel makes their building more visitor-friendly, and the new location is more walkable and accessible to residents and visitors. "Kids come through before they go to school, they can come in after school before their parents... Full story
The proposed ordinance that would have established the Petersburg Borough's first regulatory framework for wireless communication facilities failed its second reading Monday on a 3-3 tie vote, leaving the borough with no formal controls over cell tower siting just as Tidal Network continues to pursue construction of new towers in the community. Ordinance 2026-12, which had passed its first reading unanimously at the May 18 assembly meeting, would have created new language in the Petersburg...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly voted 4-2 Monday to reject the sale of a small borough-owned parcel near the Haugen Drive fire hall to Tidal Network, the broadband arm of the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, in a vote that surprised some members and capped months of contentious negotiations over cell tower expansion in Petersburg. Assembly Members Bob Martin, Rob Schwartz, Jeff Meucci, and Scott Newman voted against the resolution that would have authorized the...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly unanimously adopted the property tax millage rates for fiscal year 2027 at its May 18 regular meeting, slightly raising the rate for Service Area 1 property owners to 10.93 mills and introducing a new area-wide general purposes levy that for the first time charges all borough property owners for services the borough charter has always authorized charging borough-wide, but which Service Area 1 taxpayers have been covering since borough formation. For Service Area 1 residents the new rate of 10.93 mills - an...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly gave first-reading approval last Monday to an ordinance raising sewer utility rates by 20 percent for fiscal year 2027, the latest step in a multi-year effort to cover the costs of aging infrastructure and heightened state and federal environmental compliance requirements. Ordinance #2026-11, which passed 7-0 and will require two more readings before taking effect, would increase the base residential monthly service charge from $56.79 to $68.15 for a standard mete...
After more than a year of mounting community pressure over the locations of wireless broadband towers in Petersburg, the Borough Assembly voted unanimously Monday to advance a comprehensive wireless communications zoning ordinance on its first reading, encouraging the public to submit written comments during the two weeks before a scheduled public hearing June 1. The ordinance - 17 pages of amended municipal code accompanied by a seven-page explanatory memo from Community Development Director...
Two years after Petersburg voters rejected a sales tax cap increase by an incredibly narrow margin, the Borough Assembly voted 6-1 Monday to send the question back to the ballot this October. The ordinance, approved on its first reading, would ask borough voters at the October 6 municipal election whether to raise the maximum taxable amount on a single purchase from $1,200 to $5,000. If approved, the maximum sales tax collectible on any single transaction would rise from $72 to $300. The borough’s sales tax rate would remain at 6 percent. T...
Bear-proof bins at the ballfields are needed To the Editor: I’m writing as a frequent user of the Petersburg Ballfields, a volunteer softball coach, and a youth programs coordinator to encourage the Assembly to consider purchasing new bear- and critter-resistant garbage cans for the ballfield complex. Many community members spend time at these fields every week, and throughout the year I often find myself picking up litter around the complex, usually alongside dedicated kids who are helping out. Last week was especially discouraging because r...
The first reading of an ordinance that would raise Petersburg electric utility rates by 4% starting on July, 1, 2026 came before the Petersburg Borough Assembly at last week’s meeting. The Petersburg Borough Assembly voted 7–0 to advance Ordinance 2026-08, which updates electric utility rates and charges for fiscal year 2027. The increase was identified through the borough’s Waterworth financial forecasting software, which Utility Director Karl Hagerman implemented last year in place of the previous rate study process. For a typical residential...
